First proper post of the New Year and we’re staying with the photography theme. In Johannesburg last week I bought myself a Fujifilm Finepix X100. I’d been coveting this little beauty for weeks, and during our New Year’s trip to South Africa I finally gave in to my desire.
The gorgeous Finepix X100
The X100 is much more than a compact digital camera, and I was about to say it is in between compacts and digital SLRs, but that’s not strictly accurate. The camera has so many great features, and a truly wonderful lens combined with a revolutionary hybrid optical/electronic viewfinder, all wrapped up in a well-built retro design that reminds me of my old Olympus trip. It has all the quality and features of leading DSLRs, all it does not have is interchangeable lenses. Instead it has a prime 23mm f2.0 lens with the shutter built in.
Another classic camera. This time from the Old 35mm Days.
Anyway I returned to Luanda with my cherished new possession, and couldn’t wait to try it out. A photographer’s article on Google+ about zone focusing gave me the idea to try and shoot some Luanda street life from the passenger seat of the car. With Dino driving me to the supermarket I (here comes the techie part) set the X100 to manual focus and pre-focused the lens to 2.5 metres, and set an aperture of f8 with the ISO set to 800. This combination would allow me to use shutter speeds fast enough to capture images from a moving vehicle without blurring, and without the need to wait for autofocus to engage (through a dirty car window) (end of techie part) I was able to snap away quickly.
The resulting collection of candid shots pleased me as a first outing with the camera. Right, I thought. All I now need to do is to upload the pics to my Smugmug page, then embed a slideshow in this post, and we’ll have a winning first posting for 2012 on our hands!
But No.
WordPress has pissed me off today. In an apparent attempt to coerce its users to keep their images on WordPress and use its own image features rather than those of another site they have blocked the adding of third-party embed code to posts. Long story short (and jargon-free): I can’t show you a slideshow directly on this page without copying all the photos here first, and I’m not going to give WordPress the satisfaction of doing that.
So, instead, here’s a static image that, when you click on it, will take you over to Smugmug to view the slideshow there.
Click image to jump to the Smugmug site and then click Slideshow (Grr!)
Is that what you wanted WordPress? I hope you’re satisfied!
Hmph. (hope you like the pics)
Bloody Marvellous! 
Looking good. I assume the “colorized” individuals in a few of the b/w shots were examples of post-processing, rather than some unknown mojo built into the camera. I was surprised at the depth of field from f8, but I realized I was thinking in terms of a 35mm film SLR prime lens.
And… while it’s fresh in my mind: despite the challenges most Angolans face making ends meet, I see that a few of the b*gg*rs manage to fit canned spray paint into their budgets. Just bloody marvelous.
DSLR Camera. An important tip to consider with photography is that photography is one case where you might be at the mercy of the tools you use. This is important to consider because there is only so much you can do with a non dSLR camera due to processor and lens limitations. Invest in a DSLR camera. The single best thing you can do to improve your photography is to purchase a good camera. A digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera allows you to use lenses specific to the type of photography you are pursuing, and offer the ability to control every setting..
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